I’ve pretty much followed her directions and with the exception of cutting down the recipe to feed just The Hubbs & myself. Is creamed spinach always so…. bland?

I added lots of salt, pepper, a little bit of nutmeg. It just seems like something’s missing. I ended up adding some bacon salt, lots more pepper and a good amount of parmesan cheese which seems to have helped. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it seems to taste a little better now that I’ve drowned it in cheese.

I wonder if perhaps I should have done something more like use a can of cream of mushroom soup instead of making a white sauce from scratch..?

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6 thoughts on “I keep craving weird stuff..”

hmmm…so how I do my creamed spinach isn’t that far off from this recipe, except that I sautee bacon first and use the grease for the onions. the meaty-ness adds a bit of ooomph to creamed spinach that makes for a more savory side dish. not that creamed spinach by itself isn’t bad, but it’s strangely random even when following the same recipe consistently. I tend to believe it’s because of the spinach itself, but I can’t quite put a finger on why the flavors can be so disparate even though the cooking method is consistent.

Given that I’ve never had creamed spinach before in my life, it’s not exactly a familiar dish to me (just like other strange American dishes like green bean casserole and candied yams with marshmallows) so I had no idea how it was supposed to taste.
Talking with a bunch of my boys, some of them mentioned the bacon thing but since I was making pork chops for dindin tonight, I thought it might be a slight piggy-overkill ^_^
It definitely tasted better when I was eating it at dinner as opposed to scooping up slimy bits of it out of the pot over the stove to taste-test. Definitely more cheese and next time bacon. The leftovers are going to be relegated to a mac’n’cheese’spinach dish ^_^

LOL…now Green Bean Casserole fer sure I’d figure you’d be 100% in support of! Then again, I only like my casserole, which I’m sure you’d dig because it’s LOADED with bacon!!!
Tell ya what, Creamed spinach is pretty much hit or miss for everyone, either it’s awesome or awful, so your reaction despite your unfamiliarity is not at all uncommon; I mean you’re taking something that’s super earthy like Spinach and inundating it with something super rich like butter and cream, so it’s not like you’ve got matching flavors from the get-go…where the most common notion about creaming spinach is to take off some of the edginess of spinach while still preserving it’s flavors.
What I’ve learned about creamed spinach is to balance it in some way to continue to offset it’s earthiness. Most commonly, I’ve seen creamed spinach as a side at steakhouses, where the saltiness and meatiness of a chop compliments spinach wonderfully. You adding cheese or others adding bacon is similar, and if you think about it, it’s the same method as cooking greens with ham hock or other pork product…just without the cream!

Point taken — like I said, it tasted pretty good with my crispy pork chop, but on its own out of the pot with no other protein it was pretty uninspiring, at best. To my recollection, I’ve never seen creamed spinach on a steakhouse menu, either, but then we don’t really go out for steak much seeing as we can easily (and cheaply) make it at home.
I have never had green bean casserole. I am curious as to how it would taste and you’re right, I’m probably spoiled and would probably only like your recipe ;)